Breaking news: “The Trump Store has a gift for every patriot on your Christmas list.”
That’s a quote from Cat Zakrewski in the Washington Post on Christmas Day, 2024. The Trump Store?
“It’s a little late for this year’s celebrations, but you can get a very early jump on next year and count down with the $38 Trump Advent calendar. Or trim the tree with a $95 Mar-a-Lago bauble or a $16 MAGA hat ornament, sold in nine colors. (A glass version of the hat ornament is $92.) Stuff stockings with an $86 “GIANT Trump Chocolate Gold Bar” and a $22 pair of candy cane socks printed with “Trump.” Prepare a holiday feast with a $14 Trump Christmas tree potholder and $28 Trump apron featuring Santa waving an American flag.”
“The profits from these holiday trinkets do not benefit a political committee or a charitable cause, but the Trump Organization, the Trump family’s privately owned conglomerate of real estate, hotel and lifestyle businesses. . . . .”
“The Trump Organization thought of everyone celebrating Trump’s nonconsecutive terms this yuletide season, rolling out a line of merchandise printed with “45-47,” including $195 quarter-zip sweatshirts, $85 cigar ashtrays and $38 baseball caps. Fido can’t go without his gear, of course: The store also sells gifts for dogs, including orange leashes and camo collars emblazoned with Trump’s name. And don’t forget the kids! How about a $38 teddy bear wearing a red, white or blue Trump sweater, $8 MAGA hat stickers or an array of Trump sweets, including $16 gummy bears?”
So, yes, the Trump Store has “a gift for every patriot on your Christmas list.” Maybe I’m not as patriotric as I thought I was, but I don’t remember the likes of Ike, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, or either Bush “merching out” on their public service to the nation and acting like a celebrity instead of a President. Maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, but . . . . does this mean I am un-patriotic if I find Trump personally profiting from the Presidency is . . what’s the word my mother used to say about this sort of thing? . . . totally “tacky”?
Maybe the true meaning of the season for those “real Americans” is just buying more stupid stuff? But, of course, it’s “perfectly legal” for Trump to be peddling his tacky trinkets and, of course, legal for all the true patriots to show their adoration of the “Commander in Cheat.”
But all of this reveal the deeper problem legally and ethically. Profiting from the Presidency is a new phenomenon in U.S. politics. As Open Secrets tells us:
“No modern president has jumped so directly from the world of business to the presidency as Donald Trump. And in so doing, Trump has refused to do as his predecessors have done: sever ties to the companies or financial interests that may pose, or present the appearance of, a conflict of interest. By keeping his assets in a family-managed trust, which he can revoke at any time, Trump and his family are in the unique position to profit directly from his public service. Special interests in Washington have caught on. Those seeking to curry favor with Trump are not only donating to his reelection campaign but holding fundraisers and galas at his resorts, private clubs and hotels – the proceeds of which benefit him and his family. “
I have argued elsewhere, in the British Journal of American Legal Studies, volume 7, issue #2.
that Trump’s blending of his personal profits and his public duties is not Constitutional.
The American Constitution Society website says much the same thing:
“President Donald Trump has been violating the Constitution since noon on January 20, 2017. His decision in the months prior to his inauguration to retain ownership and control of his sprawling business empire—a move that went against both long-standing historical practice and the advice of career government ethics officials—put him at odds with the Constitution’s original anti-corruption provisions the moment he was sworn in. Generally, these anti-corruption provisions, the so-called Emoluments Clauses, prohibit the president from receiving any profit, gain, or advantage from any foreign or domestic government.”
Noted: the steady stream of Trump’s Christmas trinkets and other “merch” is by no means illegal under the two Emoluments clauses, and the patriots who buy them are not domestic governments, so perfectly legal right there, right? We don’t need to speculate on whether the purchase of millions of dollars of Trump-branded Christmas stuff to Vladimir Putin would be a violation, but we do know that a life in service to others and the world (the life and death of Jesus, for example) is not what Donald J. Trump is really about.